byline: Virginia Business

Bill Anderson, who founded the Eastern Virginia Tissue Bank in 1982, died in a car accident in 2002 at the age of 50. His death left the organization now known as LifeNet with an uncertain future, Thomas said in a 2023 speech.

Under Thomas’ leadership since 2004, the nonprofit that provides organ, tissue and cell transplants seems to have weathered the road bumps nicely. Today LifeNet employs more than 1,400 employees globally. In 2023, the organization worked with a record 259 people donating 686 organs for transplant.

While it’s better known for organ transplants, LifeNet Health also distributes nearly 800,000 allografts, tissue implanted from one person to another, every year. LifeNet Health Sciences provides human primary cells, tissues and 3D models for scientific research, drug discovery and safety testing. In May 2023, LifeNet purchased Bioventus’ wound care business for $85 million, including $35 million in cash at the time of purchase.

Previously, Thomas served as CEO at USA Instruments. He has an MBA from Case Western Reserve University and a master’s degree in engineering and bioengineering from the University of Akron.

After spending more than 35 years as a university professor and college president in Virginia, DiCroce has led the Hampton Roads Community Foundation for more than a decade. The foundation is the largest grant and scholarship provider in southeastern Virginia, distributing more than $23 million in 2022.

For the 2023-24 school year, the organization provided more than $1.6 million in scholarships to 443 undergraduate and graduate students. It also provides grants to nonprofits focused on health, education, the arts, the environment, animal welfare and other causes. Grants are awarded four times a year.

DiCroce, who has a doctorate in higher education from College of William & Mary, was president of Tidewater Community College for 14 years and president of Virginia Piedmont Community College for nine years. She also taught at the University of Virginia, William & Mary and Old Dominion University. DiCroce earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from ODU.

She serves on the boards of the Hampton Roads Executive Roundtable, RVA757 Connects and Virginia Beach Vision.

As CEO of the University of Virginia Foundation for three decades, Rose is in charge of stewarding most of the real estate endeavors for the commonwealth’s flagship university. He oversees about 400 employees and 5,200 acres of properties, including iconic locations such as Boar’s Head Resort, Morven Farm and Birdwood Golf Course.

The foundation is spearheading the development of affordable housing that will be restricted to households with annual incomes of less than 60% of the area’s median income. The development team is working on plans for three sites, including preliminary plans for a project at 10th and Wertland streets in Charlottesville.

In addition to managing real estate, the foundation provides financial management assistance to the university’s capital campaign. The foundation’s annual revenue is about $80 million.

Rose previously served as the university’s assistant vice president for administration. He also held positions in student affairs at James Madison University and Miami University in Ohio. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Miami University and his doctorate from U.Va.

Collins came to Virginia from Cornell University four years ago for a transformative purpose: to build Virginia Tech’s $1 billion Innovation Campus and aid the commonwealth’s efforts to close a regional tech talent gap.

The first academic building on the Alexandria campus is set to open in spring 2025 — pushed back from its planned opening in August — but computer science and engineering students already have been attending classes in temporary quarters since 2021.

In Collins’ four years with Virginia Tech, the number of its computer science and computer engineering master’s degree students based in the D.C., area has grown to nearly 400. Innovation Campus graduate students are part of Virginia’s Tech Talent Investment Program, which aims to graduate 31,000 computer science and engineering grads in the next two decades.   

Collins, who has a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2021. He also is a board member at Mitre, a McLean-based not-for-profit research and development company.

After starting her post-secondary education career as  a faculty member teaching English, Kress now presides over Virginia’s largest community college — and one of the nation’s largest — with more than 70,000 students across six campuses, including NOVA’s Medical Education Campus in Springfield.

Her tenure began in 2020 following a nearly 30-year career that includes posts as provost at Santa Fe University and president of Monroe Community College in Florida. 

Kress has received awards from the Higher Learning Advocates, the Virginia Community College System, Phi Theta Kappa, the American Association of University Women and the University of Florida, her alma mater.

She has testified before Congress on community colleges and workforce development and served as a negotiator on federal higher education regulations.

Kress serves on the boards of the American Council on Education, Leadership Greater Washington, Capital Area Food Bank and the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metro Area.

She earned bachelor’s degrees in English and finance, a master’s degree in English and a doctorate in higher education administration, all from the University of Florida. 

Hourigan founded construction and development company Hourigan Group in 1993 after stints with Westinghouse and Galloway.

The company has more than 200 employees, all based in Virginia.

Notable Hourigan Group projects in the works include the $18 million VCU CoStar Center for Arts & Innovation, which will span seven stories and encompass 209,000 square feet. It is designed to consolidate Virginia Commonwealth University’s arts and innovation programs under one roof.

Another major project is the three-story, 95,000-square-foot addition to Bon Secours Harbour View Hospital in Suffolk, expected to be finished in early 2025.

In February, the Lego Group selected a joint venture of Kentucky-based Gray Inc. and Hourigan as general contractor for its $1 billion toy-manufacturing plant in Chesterfield County. Completion is scheduled for 2027, according to Lego.

Mark Hourigan earned his bachelor’s degree at Gettysburg College and his MBA from the University of Richmond. He serves on the industry advisory board for Virginia Tech’s Myers-Lawson School of Construction. His son, Mark Hourigan Jr., also works at the firm as a project manager and partner.

Kang is known primarily as the founder and former CEO of Cognosante, which provides IT support to federal, state and local government agencies in public health; founder of Cognosante Ventures, an early-stage health IT startup investor; and the Cognosante Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes workforce access and opportunity for women and veterans. In May, Arlington County-based Accenture Federal Services completed acquisition of the company, which Kang founded in 2008.

Part of the ownership group that bought the Baltimore Orioles in January, Kang continues to expand her sports ownership reach beyond the Washington Spirit, which competes in the U.S. National Women’s Soccer League. In December 2023, she acquired the London City Lionesses, a women’s pro football (soccer) league, and in February, she completed her acquisition of the Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, which competes in the French Division 1 women’s football league. Kang, who became OLF’s president, owns 52.9% of the team, and OL Groupe owns the remaining 47.1%. Kang announced during the Paris Summer Olympics that she intends to raise $100 million to invest in women’s soccer teams worldwide.

Born in South Korea, she moved to the United States as a teen with her family. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and her master’s degree from the Yale School of Management.

Barkin has served as head of one of 12 regional Fed banks since 2018. He’s also a voting member on the Fed’s interest-setting Federal Open Market Committee for 2024, holding one of four rotating seats on the committee.

In June, Barkin told a gathering of the Richmond chapter of the Risk Management Association that the U.S. economy has yet to feel the effects of current interest rates, but that it eventually will.

To gather insights on the economy, Barkin likes to be on the ground, talking with business, civic and community leaders in the Fed’s Fifth District, which covers South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C., West Virginia and Maryland.

A native of Tampa, Florida, Barkin worked for three decades at global consultancy McKinsey & Co., where his roles included chief financial officer and chief risk officer. He also served on the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta from 2009 to 2014. 

A three-time Harvard grad, Barkin has sat on the Emory University board of trustees since 2014. He is also a member of the executive committee of the United States Golf Association.

A top economics graduate at Dartmouth and a world champion board gamer, Calkins co-founded cloud computing and enterprise software firm Appian in his basement in 1999. It grew to become the most successful software IPO of 2017.

In 2023, Appian reaped $304.5 million in cloud subscription revenue, up 29% compared with 2022. The company’s total 2023 revenue was $545.4 million, an annual increase of 17%.

Calkins worked at software company MicroStrategy before forming Appian. He serves on the board of the University of Virginia’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership and sits on the Virginia Public Access Project’s leadership council. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Calkins has urged tech firms to protest Russia and helped the Renew Democracy Initiative create fight4ukraine.com.

In August, in an effort to boost profits, Appian announced it had laid off 150 of its 2,243 workers and moved some operations to its McLean headquarters.

In July, the Virginia Court of Appeals ordered a new trial in the 2022 civil corporate espionage case Appian brought against rival Pegasystems, overturning a record $2.04 billion verdict against Pega. Appian said it plans to appeal the decision to the Virginia Supreme Court.

In early 2019, Smith was named managing partner of the Atlanta-based Troutman Sanders’ Richmond office. 

Since then, the firm became Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders through a merger, but Smith held on to his leadership role. Today, he oversees more than 150 attorneys working in numerous practice areas, including the strategies group, which is the firm’s full-service government relations subsidiary. In July, Law.com reported that Troutman Pepper plans a merger with Locke Lord that would create a combined firm with $1.6 billion annual revenue by the end of 2024.

Smith also helps lead Troutman Pepper’s Environmental and Natural Resources Practice Group. Additionally, he serves as water and solid waste regulation legal counsel for the Virginia Manufacturers Association directs environmental affairs in Virginia and West Virginia for the Metallurgical Coal Producers Association and is legal counsel to the Corporate Environmental Enforcement Council.

An alumnus of the University of Richmond and Vermont Law and Graduate School, Smith writes and speaks extensively on the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws.